Fix you
by ALICEINW0NDERLAND
Summary: Her life was over, she had lost everything. But then he returned to her and put her back together again.


It all began with five words. Five words that irrevocably sent my whole world up in smoke.

"Angela, we need to talk."

Ben had been quieter than usual, more pensive and snappy; I had put it down to course work. Oh, how wrong I had been. What a fool I was to believe that in his moments of silence that he was trying to block _me _out, whilst really, all he could think of was _her. _

"I have been seeing someone else, and I love her." He had been quick, as if he had to rush the words to get them out, and all I had done was stare, blinking in uncomprehending disbelief.

"What?" Had been my pitiful attempt to make sense of his words and after that moment I knew the Ben who had once loved me was long gone and this new, hard Ben had taken his place.

"I have been seeing Jessica, and she's pregnant. I want to be there and so I am ending this - Us. It wasn't going anywhere, anyway." His eyes, his precious bespectacled eyes, left mine at that moment and pointedly he stared over my shoulder. My mouth was open and my eyes were wide, this wasn't happening, this _couldn't _be happening. But it was and I would never have my sweet, loving Ben back. No, he was Jessica's and I knew from years of experience that once Jessica had her claws on something she would never give it up. Just like with Mike. And now, just like with Ben.

"But... I love you," Was my feeble protest and for only a second did his eyes flicker back to mine and in that brief glance I saw something I never would have permitted myself to see if I had known otherwise. Ben no longer loved me. Had he ever?

"I'm sorry," Was all he said and a broken sob rose from my chest.

Ben, my love, my life, had turned his back on me and had walked away without a single backward glance. My heart had left me then, risen, broken and crushed, into the air above me, before crashing into the soil and breaking even more under my weight as I fell onto it, sobbing and gasping. All I could think of was, it was over, and all I could do was cry.

I lived my life, empty and incomplete, before the answer presented itself upon me. I had continued to work and to live a seemingly normal life but beneath it all, I was no longer there. I was aware whenever a familiar laugh or smile was near and I ached whenever my brothers accidentally let the name 'Ben' slip from their young and unknowing lips. No one, not even my parents, knew how I had cried and screamed each night, each night when I would picture him with her and no one would know how even the mere mention of what we used to be made me vanish from the Earth and become part of the air circulating around us all.

My answer, my saviour, my freedom came in the form of a man with blonde hair and baby blue eyes. A man who had the power to pick me up with the very mention of what we had all once been and he managed to put me back together, piece by piece.

Mike Newton entered my life on November the twelfth, when I was working and when I was most like my normal self. I found that when I was busy I least thought of Ben and I least thought of the throbbing hole he had left in my heart.

"Angela," Was all he had said and it had made something, something long forgotten, stir in the bottom of my shattered heart.

"Mike," Had been all I could manage and even the slightest mention of him, let alone seeing him before me, and had me smile – a ghost of a smile, but a smile nonetheless.

"Jessica had her baby last night, she called her Angela. Angela Cheney." Mike had sounded blank and empty, so unlike him and even me, a poor excuse for a human being, noticed this and was concerned.

"Bitch," I mumbled unthinkingly and it had shocked me at how foreign my own voice was to me.

Mike had laughed, his laughter sounding just as unused as mine and I unconvincingly tried to join him. I was not the only one with a broken heart that day, I know this now.

"How have you been?" He had asked, to be polite, I am sure and my reply had been the usual methodical response.

"Fine and you?" It was a lie; there was no doubt about that, and it had always worked whenever anyone had asked. But that was before Mike. Mike had seen through me. Mike had always seen through me.

"Angela. We both know you have not been 'fine' and I think we both know that I am - and have not been - any better, so let's just cut the crap, okay?" Mike had always been a forward person; Jessica had told me once that that was what she had liked most about him.

"Fine." Was all I had said and stubbornly I looked away, averting my eyes to the counter and then to the cash register.

"Would you like to have coffee with me?" Mike had said, his once hard tone softening to the voice I had known for years.

"Mike. I am at work. I'm sorry, but no." Truth be told, my boss had hated the new me, he had hated how silent I had become and how I had never smiled when I came into work – Ben had once mocked me one day after work by saying that my boss fancied me and I had giggled and pretended like I didn't think this too – and so I had known that if I had asked, he would have gladly sent me off, glad for the stony silence that was my presence to be gone from his place of occupation.

"Not now. I mean later, when you finish. Please, Angela. I need this, I need to talk to someone, it's been a while..." It was the pleading in his voice that made my icy resilience break and I had sighed.

"Okay. I finish in about an hour; do you want to meet somewhere?" Despite working in a coffee shop, I had not wanted to stay there for long, as if I were afraid that Ben would remember that I worked there and find me there – even then, after almost a year, I cling onto the hope that he would come crawling back to me, begging for my forgiveness.

"Sure." That was it. That was all he said. There was no controlling, no planning, just an agreement and gratitude. Mike was different. But that wasn't news to me; I had always known he had been different from the usual Forks teenagers. But what I hadn't known was that he was special and it was only until much later did I realize that it was for that reason that he was so different from all the other boys I had known.

Mike and I met at a coffee shop down the road exactly twenty four minutes after that and for the first time in a long time, I smiled without having the aching presence of my former love beside me and I smiled without having to worry about anything apart from foam moustaches and lipstick on my teeth.

We continued to meet every other day and each day, gradually, I began to return to the sweet, cheerful girl I had always been. But yet, even as Mike and I giggled over our high school years, something was not quite right. Something was there, yet something was missing.

However, I did not have to wait long for the answer. It had been almost three months since Jessica had given birth to her baby and since Mike had returned to my once miserable excuse for a life and we were in a simple, yet sophisticated restaurant down the road from my new apartment. I had ordered fish, he had ordered chicken.

"Angela? Mike?" Two words that had the power to send me back into the depressing from whence I came. I had felt good that night, I had straightened my long brown hair and had worn a black dress that my mother said I looked 'top notch' in and I had felt more attractive and happy then I had done in a long time. I had even worn some make-up, something I had decided against long ago.

My eyes had been soft, full of warm when I had looked up and every ounce of happiness that had been in my body for those last months left me just like the air from my lungs.

"Ben?" I had choked, dropping my fork and not even noticing it fall onto the expensive rugged floor. My eyes, shocked and fearful, flickered from Ben, to the woman beside him. Jessica. She was holding a baby. Baby Angela Cheney.

"Mike? Angie?" She had said innocently, in her cheerful yet undeniably cold voice and I had shuddered uncontrollably.

"What are you doing here?" Mike had snapped, his kind eyes trained to my face and yet I was unable to look at him completely.

"We're having dinner, as a family." Those last few words ripped open the steadily healing hole in my chest and I gasped, finding myself unable to look at anything. I had shut my eyes, squeezed them together as hard as I could, in hope that when I opened them again, that everything would be back to where it had been; just me and Mike.

"Are you okay, Angie?" Jessica's ostensibly benevolent inquiry made my eyes open and it burnt like a white-hot poker in my chest, leaving me gasping for air and falling back in my chair. I had not been strong enough to sit there, in a fluid motion I had sprung to my feet, quivering and panting, and had dashed out of the back doors and onto the dim, shadowy back streets.

As I finally stopped, I fell back and hit the wall in a way that should have hurt. But it didn't hurt; nothing could hurt me in comparison to the fire that blazed away in my tender heart. It was raining and within minutes I would be wet through, but I was too far gone to care about my allegedly 'top notch' dress.

"Angela?" There it was again; my name. My simple, commonplace name that was bound to belong to hundreds of different girls in Washington alone. "Oh, Angela." That time it was closer and I had to look up, I had to.

The sight was not what I had expected, but it was not a surprise either; Mike Newton standing in the rain, waiting patiently for the opportunity to comfort me as he had done for three months. Mike. Mike would always be there for me, but still I yearned to be the one that Ben desired. The rain was thick in his hair and it soaked his white shirt underneath his smart black jacket. He had a look of a man on his usually youthful face and his brilliant eyes were narrowed, but on me, as always.

"Mike." I had all but whispered through the rain and I do not know how, or why, it happened but before I knew what was happening, I was reaching out for him and he was doing the exact same. Unanimous. Aligned. Perfect. We kissed in the rain for what seemed to be a lifetime before he drew away and I was left breathless.

"Angela," He had said, panting and looking into my eyes with longing and desperation, "I love you."

And with three words, it all began.

And I reached for him once again without hesitation.

* * *

**MY FIRST ONE SHOT / ONE CHAPTER STORY XD AS WELL AS MY SECOND STORY. I hope you like it. I'm reading the Lovely Bones right now and the way Susie narrates made me want to write this. I kept shifting from narrative to past tense and that was – sort of – deliberate but if I did it wrong, well, then I am sorry. I really hope you like this, I'm pretty proud of it. I love Twilight and the humans – and Mike, seriously, Bella puts him down so much and for no reason. He's awesome. All of this belongs to Stephenie Meyer and the song 'Transatlanticism' by Death Cab for a Cutie gave me muse as well as 'Fix you' by the amazing Coldplay. Please review, you know I love to hear from you! **


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